North Sea oil estimates ‘ludicrously pessimistic’

Sir Ian Wood: Calculations now in question. Picture: Jane Barlow

MARK MCLAUGHLIN AND LYNSEY BEWS

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE: North Sea oil forecasts by the UK government’s budget watchdog are “ludicrously pessimistic” compared with the oil industry’s “plausible” high-end projection, according to academics.

Industry body Oil and Gas UK yesterday stood by its projection that there are 24 billion barrels of oil left in the North Sea, following scepticism by two leading oil economists Sir Ian Wood and Melfort Campbell.

The lucrative industry projection, which has been seized upon by the SNP in its case for Scottish independence, has now been endorsed by academics from Robert Gordon University in the UK’s oil capital Aberdeen.

Earlier this week, Mr Campbell, a former Scottish Government oil adviser, said the industry would be “hard pushed” to extract even mid-range projections of 16 billion barrels and that 24 billion barrels is an “aspirational scenario”. He was responding to a warning by Sir Ian Wood, a man First Minister Alex Salmond has hailed as “an authority on North Sea oil and gas”, that Scotland could run out of oil in just 35 years.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has said the SNP’s case for independence is “built on fantastical over-optimistic oil predictions”.

But the Aberdeen professors have hailed “the truly brilliant and innovative approach” of the oil industry in exploiting new reserves.

“The healthy 16 billion barrels or so of oil equivalent figures now widely accepted by all campaigners in the referendum debate (apart from the ludicrously pessimistic forecasts from the Office for Budgetary Responsibility) as being economically exploitable from existing discoveries is surely an understatement of the future potential of North Sea production,” the report says.

“Professor Alex Kemp and Linda Stephen have modelled future production based on oil prices at $90 per barrel and arrived at future production figures up to 2050 of between 15-16.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

“Since current oil prices are higher than $90 and likely to rise and as improvement in technology continue then ‘the ultimate potential of 24 billion barrels of oil equivalent foreseen by Oil and Gas UK appears plausible’.

“This outcome is all the more probable given the truly brilliant and innovative approach of the North Sea oil industry towards finding and exploiting reserves.”

They said the recent Scottish Government North Sea - Two Futures report “gives real food for thought”.

However, Mr Alexander warned an independent Scotland faces a basic income tax rate of 30 per cent or 5 per cent cuts to public spending when Sir Ian’s oil estimates are taken into account.

This would mean the loss of around 30,000 public sector jobs, he claims.